UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve joined ReverbNation in a perhaps futile effort to promote my music. I was just having a look at my pages on that site when I was assaulted by the piercing, fearsome visage of some guy named John Anthony. (He’s probably a much more well-established musician than I am, but I’ve never heard of him, so he is therefore “some guy.”)

His icy stare is compelling me to CLICK THAT LINK but no, I will not! I will muster all the will within my soul to do anything other than click that link. Begone, John Anthony! You are almost as terrifying as the Hypnotoad.

OK, I clicked it.

Wow, he really does sound like Dennis DeYoung. And… um… that’s about all I have to say about that. My only other comment (before I must leave the site in haste, lest I become hypnotized) is that I think he must have stolen away Paul Todd‘s webmaster. In fact, the Paul Todd similarities seem to go deeper than the bitchin’ website. He really needs an animation that morphs between a photo and cartoon of himself, though.

It looks like my candidate of choice, Barack Obama, sailed to an easy victory over Hillary Clinton tonight in the Wisconsin primary. That’s good news, as far as I’m concerned. I’m also glad to see John McCain taking a decisive victory over Mike Huckabee (sorry, I refuse to provide a link), even though I still find it disturbing that 37% of the voters in the Republican primary were willing to support a candidate who proudly professes his disbelief in evolution. I don’t really want McCain to win the general election, and I know he’ll pose a much tougher challenge to the Democratic nominee than any of the other Republicans could hope to, but I can live with a McCain presidency. If someone as willfully ignorant as Huckabee won, though, I might just have to move to Canada. (And that’s a promise I couldn’t even keep when Bush got re-elected.)

When I saw that Huckabee 37% number, I also noticed the stunning disparity in total number of Democratic vs. Republican voters in said primary:

Source: MSNBC

I know Democrats have been turning out in higher numbers than Republicans this year, and that Wisconsin, although generally considered a “battleground” state, has tended to lean ever-so-slightly left or, if you must, “blue.” But still, this is a huge difference: Hillary Clinton, the decisive loser in the Democratic race, garnered more than twice the number of votes as the winner of the Republican race.

Tally up the total number of votes (with 92% of precincts reporting), and the Democrats had nearly 1,000,000 votes, while the Republicans just scraped above 370,000.

Again, I’m sure there are several contributing factors that increased this year’s Democratic turnout (and decreased Republican turnout), but I think we should not gloss over the fact that the electorate is skewing this strongly to the Democrats. I would have to do some research on how primary voting has split between the parties in past elections before coming to any grandiose (or paranoid) conclusions about all of this, but for now I will just make a mental note of the state of affairs here in February, and compare results come November.

I’ve recently set up pages on the musician sites ReverbNation and SoundClick. (Basically, these sites are what MySpace was supposed to be, and they don’t suck.)

I’m presently working on a major redesign of this site to make it more portal-like and less generic-WordPress-blog-like, and once that’s in place I’ll integrate ReverbNation and SoundClick content more seamlessly into the site (plus I’m planning to set up some PayPal-Kunaki integration to handle sales of my CDs directly from this site), but in the meantime, here are the links:

http://www.reverbnation.com/room34

http://www.soundclick.com/room34

For reasons I don’t care to get into, I was singing Leslie Gore’s modest ’60s hit, “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” (best known to Simpsons fans as the “chase music” Chief Wiggum and Homer play in the squad car as they chase Marge and Ruth Powers in the classic episode, “Marge on the Lam”), and as usual when I get a random song in my head, I wanted to crank up the audio clip of it from the iTunes Store for the amusement (or annoyance) of everyone within earshot.

As I was listening to the clip, I noticed something odd. The CD it’s currently available on is from the 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection series, easily identified by its distinctive black-white-and-gray cover designs. I believe these originally featured artists from the A&M label, but eventually expanded to include other artists currently distributed by various labels under the (very large) blanket of Universal Music Group.

And that, I guess, is how ’60s bubblegum pop like Leslie Gore (originally released on Mercury, I believe) ends up being distributed by the same label as Ghostface Killah.

Since I was in my mid-20s when Pokémon was created, I never really “got” it. The only thing I knew about it was the whole seizure thing. But then I had kids. Just before he turned 4, my son went through a brief-but-intense phase of obsession with the Pokémon cartoons and toys just before he discovered Mario and the video game floodgates opened, leaving all past obsessions (Thomas, Star Wars, etc.) in the dust (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor).

So as the video game thing took off, I bought him Pokémon FireRed for the Game Boy Advance, thinking I could tap into his pre-video game interest. I vaguely knew that the games were RPG-style, but I didn’t make the connection that, unlike in many games, where there’s reading but it’s fairly inconsequential, in a Pokémon game it is absolutely essential that you be able to read in order to play. Since my son’s still a pre-schooler, that didn’t work out so well.

Eventually, I decided to give the game a try myself, and I’ve become completely hooked. It’s kind of ridiculous, but the characters are tremendously varied and creative, with clever names, and the RPG elements of the game are solid and very well-done. What can I say, it’s fun!

But it wasn’t until I encountered one particular foe, that’s not only funny looking but very cleverly named, that I fully embraced the Pokémon world: I’m not even sure what it is, but it appears to be a purple, wheezing puff bag, with a very self-satisfied smile, oozing toxic fumes, named (I love this) “Koffing.” And here it is, in all its nasty glory. Apparently there’s a mutant evolved version named “Wheezing” as well.

Obviously I’m not the only person who appreciates Koffing’s unique appeal. He’s achieved the ultimate honor: an “ate my balls” page.